Councillor Willie Ben Kalmasei publishes spending poster

Councillor for Shefa Province, Willie Ben Kalmasei, has become the first GJP Councillor to publish a poster reporting the amount of money he has spent from his Area Council Fund as well as from his own salary on meeting the needs and requests of communities within his constituency of Efate.

His poster report shows that in 2013 the Councillor approved an amount of 126,053 vatu from the Area Council Fund and spent an additional 181,399 vatu from his own salary on community requests, making a total of 307,452 vatu spent that year.

Councillor Kalmasei’s poster report is the first to be produced by a GJP (Graon mo Jastis Pati) Councillor, following a party policy that all the party’s Members of Parliament have to produce a poster showing the spending of their annual allocation.

The four GJP MP’s elected in the last general election - Ralph Regenvanu (Port Vila), Alfred Maoh (Santo), Daniel Nalet (Malekula) and Gillion William (Efate) - have all already produced their allocation spending posters for 2013, which have been widely distributed throughout their constituencies.

MP Ralph Regenvanu has put out posters showing all his allocation spending each year since he was first elected in 2008.

At the last annual GJP Elected Officials Meeting in Port Vila in November 2014, it was decided that all councillors elected on the GJP ticket would also endeavour to produce poster reports showing the money that they have spent or facilitated payment of in their constituencies.

With the production of his report, Councillor Willie Ben Kalmasei becomes the first GJP Councillor to achieve this.